Thursday, August 27, 2009

As Old Nazis Die Off, Pursuit Goes On

For 30 years, Eli M. Rosenbaum has been hunting Nazi war criminals. Even as the last of them die off, he is not giving up. “There is still time to bring some of these people to justice, and we ought not fail to do that,” said Mr. Rosenbaum, director of the Office of Special Investigations, who arrived at that Justice Department agency as a summer intern in 1979, the year it was created, and became its chief in 1995.

Mr. Rosenbaum says that at present, about 30 people in the United States who may have a Nazi past are under investigation, along with some 80 possible war criminals from more recent conflicts.

About half the office’s recent litigation efforts have involved Nazi suspects, among them John Demjanjuk, who is charged with atrocities as a concentration camp guard in Poland. Mr. Demjanjuk was deported to Germany in May.

“It’s a few years more,” Mr. Rosenbaum said of the hunt for the last Nazis. “I don’t think that you will hear the department soon say: ‘That’s it. These cases are finished.’ ”